the prejudices which now repel them from each other, and will, we trust, at some future day, cement them in mutual kindness and recognition, and realise the beautiful idea of Christian unity.

Such are the views, which I have formed of the history of Christianity. They suggest the principles, by which I shall endeavour to be guided in conducting my class through a course of studies on that important subject. Without denying that I possess strong and decided convictions of that which is permanent and essential in Christianity—of that which carries to my own mind conclusive evidence of truth and divine authority-I do not conceive, it will be my duty to interpret history in the spirit of dogmatic theology. My business will be to describe facts, as I believe them, from the best information I can obtain, to have taken place, without reference to their possible bearing upon controverted points of doctrine and discipline; and when I have explained the circumstances, under which an opinion, a practice or an institution arose, have exhibited its development and traced its modifications and pointed out its obvious influence on manners, literature, philosophy and art-so far as the means exist of forming a judgment on so wide a range of topics—I shall feel that I have fulfilled the duties properly belonging to the task which I have undertaken. One circumstance will claim an especial notice in every period of the course— the moral power of Christian principles on temper and character under the most varied forms of rite and dogma.

I propose to adopt the following distribution of my course. I shall introduce it by a sketch of the most remarkable forms and developments of the religious principle prevalent in the Heathen world, and a brief review of the history of Hebrew Monotheism, till the time of Christ. The history of Christianity itself I shall divide into four general periods: I. From the origin of the religion to the age of Constantine, or the council of Nice; II. From the age of Constantine to that of Charle

magne; III. From the time of Charlemagne to the Reformation; IV. From the Reformation to the French Revolution.

I have thought it desirable to introduce the history of Christianity by a survey of the course of religious development in the various forms of Heathenism and in the successive stages of Hebrew Monotheism-till the birth of our Saviour. It is indeed the invariable practice of Ecclesiastical writers, to commence their task by a general notice of the state of the Jewish and Pagan world at the opening of the Christian era: but to convey just and adequate notions on this subject, it appears to me indispensable to trace-briefly indeed and generally-the origin and progress of the most remarkable and widely-extended heathen religions, in relation to the several localities in which they grew up and which essentially modified their character, and to the particular form of civilisation associated with them-until the arrival of that extraordinary crisis in the history of the world, when the wide extension of the empire of Rome and the general use of the Greek language effaced the ancient lines of national demarcation, occasioned a chaotic mingling and fermentation of the most diverse elements of manners, opinion and religious belief, and thus prepared the way for the decline and corruption of the old state of society, and for the more rapid diffusion of the spiritual influences of Christianity. It is comparatively easy to collect proofs of heathen wickedness and superstition, without reference to age or country or circumstances; nor would it perhaps be very difficult, on a similar plan, to produce an equivalent counterpart from the history of Christendom:but the amplest accumulations of this sort leave no accurate impression on the mind of the actual course of human affairs in the early ages of the world, or of the precise nature and extent of the antagonistic forces against which the infant Church had to contend. I am very far from believing, that any causes can be shown to have been in operation in the state of society at the time of Christ's appearance, which will ex

plain the origin of a character and religion like his, without immediate reference to a higher source. But the outward form of Christianity, and the mode in which it was preached, must necessarily have been determined by the nature of the errors and corruptions against which it was directed; and these it is impossible to appreciate without a retrospective glance at the historical development of the form of civilisation, of which they marked the dissolution.

The four periods into which I have divided the history of Christianity, are the same which Mosheim has adopted in his Institutes. The distribution is one which naturally presents itself to every mind, which proposes to consider ecclesiastical history in its connexion with the progress of civilisation.

In the first of these periods, our attention is drawn to one of the most interesting and fruitful subjects of contemplation -to one of those momentous eras in the history of mankind, in which the great purposes of Providence reveal themselves with peculiar prominence and distinctness, marked by the operation of causes, which revolutionise the whole moral aspect of the world, and leave a broad line of separation between the old and the new forms of society. We are called to witness the expiring struggles of that ancient civilisationthe product of the accumulating influences of some thousands of years the parent of much that was magnanimous and heroic in human character, wise and thoughtful in civil polity, ingenious and profound in philosophy, beautiful and sublime in poetry and art-whose origin is lost in the dimness of legend and fable-and of which the moral unity, under a great diversity of outward manifestation, was maintained (with one small and singular exception) by the prevalence of a religious system-at first sincerely, and to the last externally, reverenced -which throughout all its ramifications agreed essentially in the deification of nature, and in the idolatrous expression of its conceptions under various symbolical or representative forms. We see this giant wrestling in its decrepitude with

the fresh life of a young and a popular faith. We observe the new Platonism-ashamed of a superstition which could no longer be defended, and yet clinging from habitude and association to the forms of idolatry-exerting its utmost ingenuity to evolve the elements of an universal Theism out of the mystical doctrines of the sacerdotal religions of Egypt and the East, or the more objective mythology of Greece and Rome; and, on the other hand, the Christian doctors, quitting by degrees the unambitious simplicity of the primitive missionaries of the faith, assuming the language of philosophy, and encountering the heathens with their own weapons of eloquence and learning; corrupting the simple Gospel, through a license of speculation, by an admixture with the various impure elements that were floating about in society, and assimilating it in some of the forms of Gnosticism to the very Heathenism against which it was primarily directed. We trace the contest through various changes of fortune, till it is so nicely balanced-that the will of an emperor is able, at the close of this period, to invest Christianity with an external ascendancy in the world.

In the second period, we are led to remark the effect of wealth and temporal greatness on the moral influences of Christianity. We observe the growth of internal divisions; the final separation of the Eastern and Western Churches; and the origin and rapid propagation of a new antagonist force in Mohammedanism, which threatened the existence of both. We perceive the fortunes of the Crescent and the Cross in some respects pursuing a parallel career and exhibiting a similar collision between the civil and the ecclesiastical powers. We see the conflict between the two religions continued, till at the close of the period they almost divide the ancient empire of the Romans between them-confronting each other on opposite sides of the Mediterranean from the coasts of Spain to the range of the Taurus-the majesty of Christendom embodied in Charlemagne, and the dominion of the Arabian prophet represented by Haroon the Just.

In the third period, we behold in its state of final consolidation that form of manners and society, which peculiarly characterises the middle ages-the compact and mighty influ ence of the Papal hierarchy ascendant throughout Europe—the higher faculties of the human mind kept awake, however unprofitably, by the subtleties of the schoolmen and art assuming a new and most beautiful development in its consecration to the service of the Church. Among the consequences of the prolonged struggle with Mohammedanism, we have to notice the remarkable phænomenon of the Crusades

-encouraged by policy, but rendered practicable by the religious enthusiasm of the people with their various effects on the state of manners, opinion and property in all parts of Christendom. Our minds are prepared for some great approaching revolution in the religious constitution of society -by the indications of public feeling which break out and multiply on every side from the eleventh and twelfth centuries downwards-by the growing wealth and importance of the middle classes, secured under their corporate privileges and their commercial leagues, which unite them in a common attachment to liberty-by the bolder thoughts which sometimes escape in the speculations of Churchmen themselves—by the free spirit and unsparing satire which breathe in all the poetry of the age, prompted by a deep yearning after spiritual renovation, alike in the stern majesty of Dante, the coarse invective of our own Piers Plowman, and the sprightly effusions of the popular muse among the Albigenses of Provence, the Trouveurs of Picardy, and the Minnesingers on the eastern bank of the Rhine. By the constant operation of these causes-aided by the influence of events, which had no im mediate connexion with religion, and one of which—the expulsion of the learned Greeks from Constantinople—origi nated in the partial triumph of Islamism over Christianity— we observe that, long before the close of this period, trains were laid in various directions beneath the great fabric of

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